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Monday, July 18, 2011

Invisible Touch

A few weeks ago, while I watched a few Genesis videos circa the Phil Collins era, I started thinking about when I became a purist about a band's presentation. In watching videos like "Invisible Touch" and "In Too Deep," I can remember being young and not giving a rat's ass about how Collins never sang and drummed at the same time in the videos. And I didn't care that the band didn't have a full-time bassist. It was Genesis, man. They play good songs. That's all!

All of this purist stuff would come later. Mainly, in my post-pubescent repelling away from all things phony. (Keep in mind, this repelling continues to this day, just in more complicated ways beyond music.)

It would be years before I understood about the hazy world of legal stuff and how a band wishes to never "replace" a founding member, whether it was Creed or the Manic Street Preachers. I have reasons to care, but I can understand reasons to not care about this stuff. Can't I just like a band when they write a song I like and not give a flip about anything else?

When it comes to bands I've never really enjoyed (like Creed), it was fun to throw invisible darts at a band who's on the cover of Rolling Stone without a bassist. Even though they had a bassist who replaced their original (and remained with the band until the original lineup reunited a few years ago), not photographing the guy made the band look like even bigger tools.

Purity is not something that remains in youth. More often than not, like the Creed example, it's another complaint about a band you could endlessly complain about. I guess when it comes to bands I don't really complain about, like Genesis, it's OK.